PERCEPTED RISK AREAS IN A FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND SUGGESTIONS ON PRECAUTIONARY ACTIONS

The concept of risk management stands for the process of planning, organizing, managing and controlling the resources and activities in an effort to minimizing the unexpected losses of an organization. The implementation of risk management involves five interconnected phases: (1) identification of the risks, (2) evaluation of the risks, (3) choosing from solution alternatives, (4) implementation of the chosen solution, and (5) evaluation and control. To date, little attention has been given to the study of risk management in the context of higher education organizations of Turkey. Ahmet Kelesoglu Faculty of Education at Selcuk University (Turkey) is a substantially appropriate faculty, having the quality of being one of the biggest faculties of Turkey with its more than 10 thousand of registered students, which makes the faculty appear to be bigger than most of the universities of Turkey. As an attempt to address the aforesaid gap in the literature, our study focused on the first phase of the risk management process and endeavored to identify the risk perceptions and suggestions of academicians from different departments of Ahmet Kelesoglu Faculty of Education. The study was designed as a explorative qualitative study mainly based on semi structured interviews. Seven academicians from different departments of the faculty participated in the research. The findings of the study were discussed by referring to the particular conditions of the faculty and suggestions were made for future research. The study also features the quality of a back ground study because both of the researchers are presently insiders of the faculty, thus they are very well acquainted with the particular conditions of the organization in question. The study was planned as a first step of the risk management activities for the universities of Selcuk, however it provides implications which may be of help to other universities of the world in their quality assurance endeavors.